A/HRC/56/48 housing insecure, often evicted.19 Many suffer from poverty, adverse childhood experiences, destitution and substance abuse,20 and have limited or no education, while having to provide for family members. Many are deceived with false or lucrative job offers, or financial incentives in exchange for sexual acts. A large majority has a history of sexual and physical abuse, neglect and child abuse, including incest.21 9. Collectively, these conditions increase women’s and girls’ risk of further exploitation, sexual assault and coercion. Women and girls are also sold by their families or intimate partners for prostitution, child or forced marriage with the purpose of sexual exploitation. Certain religious norms are instrumentalized by men with religious authority to justify enslavement22 or the prostitution of girls through child marriage23 in fake or temporary marriages known as nikah mut’ah.24 Religious and animist rituals, such as Juju in West Africa, are also used at times to convince victims that they or their families will be harmed if they go to law enforcement or try to escape or leave.25 B. Nexus between violence and prostitution 10. Prostitution results in egregious violations of human rights and multiple forms of violence against women and girls, who they are often dehumanized and perceived as persons without human rights. Prostitution violates the right of women and girls to dignity,26 and often constitutes torture, inhuman and degrading treatment. Physical forms of violence – mainly by sex act buyers – include sexual abuse, rape and gang rape, severe beatings, including for the victim’s refusal, lack of enthusiasm or dissociation.27 Kidnapping, abduction and enforced disappearance are also common.28 Women and girls are mutilated or burned, including with cigarettes.29 They have foreign objects inserted into their bodies, urinated, defecated and ejaculated upon, and can be forced to have unprotected sex.30 In pornography, acts of gagging, brutal penetration of the vagina by one or several men are particularly common.31 As a result, they are often left with lasting physical disabilities. 32 Prostitution also leads to femicide,33 serial killings34 and death threats. 11. Victims are also subjected to physical abuse, sadism and masochism by sexual act buyers. The more brutal and violent the sex act (such as being forced to endure sex acts with animals), the more users feel that they have received their “money’s worth”.35 Pregnant women are not spared.36 Prostituted women and girls are often kept in slavery or slavery-like conditions,37 where women and girls are sexually enslaved or taken by armed groups as “wives”.38 Prostituted women and girls are regularly subjected to verbal abuse offline and online, shaming and blackmail. Victims or their families may be threatened, or subjected to 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 4 Joint submission by CREA et al. Submission by CEASE. Submissions by Space International. Submission by Global Forum of Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent. Submission by ECPAT International. Submission by ENOMW. Submission by Resistenza Femminista APS et al. See European Parliament, Directorate-General for Internal Policies, “Sexual exploitation and prostitution and its impact on gender equality”. Submissions by Prajwala and Elly Arrow. Submission by CATWLAC et al. Submission by APRAMP. Submission by Equipo La Colmena. Fiona Vera-Gray, Clare McGlynn, Ibad Kureshi and Kate Butterby, “Sexual violence as a sexual script in mainstream online pornography”, The British Journal of Criminology, vol. 61, No. 5, 2021. Submission by Women at the Well. Submission by NIA Ending Violence. Submission by Space International. Submission by Culture Reframed. Submission by DIAKA. Submission by Anglican Communion. Submission by Just Planet.